Adobe shuts two app stores

Air Marketplace and InMarket will close in August

Adobe has taken the decision to close the doors of its InMarket and Adobe Air Marketplace, with the Flash-maker deciding to focus its efforts on supporting its wares on other people's app stores.

In a brief note, Adobe announced that both InMarket and Air marketplace would cease to exist on 31 August, suggesting that the services had served their purpose and that other, larger marketplaces were now better placed to serve its customers.

"After reviewing our efforts and based on feedback from developers, we have decided that we will deliver the most value by helping developers author and publish their apps on multiple platforms, said Adobe in a blog post.

"Given this focus, we have decided to discontinue development and support of Adobe InMarket. We are going to continue to provide support for publishing to different app stores through our tooling."

AIR today…

"Concurrent with this change to InMarket, we are also closing Adobe AIR Marketplace," added Adobe's statement.

"When we established Adobe AIR Marketplace three years ago, there were few distribution opportunities for AIR developers. There are now several app stores on desktops, mobile devices and tablets that service AIR developers including Apple App Store, Android Market, BlackBerry App World, Intel AppUp center, Samsung Apps, and Toshiba App Place.

"We encourage you to use these newer popular app stores to distribute your applications."

The closure is not a massive shock, given the sheer size of competitors' offerings and supporting products rather than selling them always seemed a better fit for the software giant.

With the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft all investing heavily in selling apps, Adobe may well have been better advised never to venture down the path of providing its own marketplace.